PROJECT LOG Serve the Home

Long time no see, just wanted to share with you guys my latest project that I'm working on. I've been searching for a somewhat decently priced Dell Poweredge for a while so that I could have a nice ESXi host as well as home media server etc. I've been impressed with the poweredge servers after helping a buddy of mine install a 1950 in his home server rack and helped to wire his house. So finally I was able to get my hands on a decently priced 2950 gIII with 6x 250gb sata drives off I drove down to Illinois to pick it up in person, coolest part is, it even has a warranty through the refurbishing company through the end of the year (servermonkey). First things first it was missing a DRAC off to ebay I went and scooped up a DRAC5 for it with cables as well as a PERC6i w/battery to replace the SATA/SAS controller card. Got those in and tested out the raid functions found I was able to do Raid 50 so I settled on that for now, not sure I'm going to stick with that or not if anyone has anything to suggest I'm all ears.

Server Goals:

• Replace the 250gb drives with 3tb WD Reds completed w/addition of a PERC H700
• Install ESXi and build some VM's
• Create a Media Partition with the bulk of the space going to that function
• Rack the server into a server cabinet and obtain a UPS

This leads me to the next portion of this Project, currently I use two Linksys WRT320n's modded to run DD-WRT one is in my office that provides a switch for my home PC's as well as the connection point for my Motorola DOCSIS3 cable modem and the other is in our TV room providing whole house WIFI coverage as well as wired connections for our HDTV, PS3, and WD TV Live Hub. Now as fascinating as I find DD-WRT to play with that all I really find a use for it. Fast forward to today and I have a Cisco 1812 along with a Cisco 3550-12t (12 Gigabit Ports with 2xgigabic's installed) what I plan to do is wire up the living room, and the other two bedrooms and provide them with a connection to this switch and convert my network over so it's behind the Cisco and using VLAN's for my wireless, wired, voip and some other odd's and ends put to use all the things I do in my day to day at work. It is with this idea in mind that I set about looking for a Server Cabinet, I lucked out and found a guy at work willing to part ways with a Sun Microsystems Server Cabinet cheap, so off I rented a U-Haul, bribed a buddy and came home with a shiny new purple/gray ish full height cabinet. After playing hercules, we finally got it into the basement where it's currently waiting for me to get started on this project fully.

At this point I can't decide to keep the built in power distribution built into the base of this, if anyone has some input on whether it's worth it to keep this I'd be willing to entertain the notion of getting an electrician out because currently it's not set up to just plug right in to 110v. If there is no benefit to keeping this I'm not opposed to ripping it out and starting from scratch.

Network Goals:

• Replace the Linksys Router with a Cisco 1812 (also looking at a 3825)
• Move the network over to the 3550-12t catalyst and create VLANs
• Configure QOS for the VOIP service to ensure phone calls get priority
• Begin to build out a CCNA/CCNP lab and document it as I go

Pictures to come for you guys in the next day or so

J

Very nice setup, I'm excited to see how your project progresses.

Nice, subscribed

Here's some pics to tide you over while I take some more

- The server as it is

- Current Storage array

- The guts

- mmmm perc 6i...

- DRAC5 love

And since you guys have been so patient, a few teaser pictures



J

Nice. I'm looking forward for some 3TB Reds in my future too

- Out with the old...

- 250gb... sheesh

- In with the new!

That is... after 21 hours of extended drive testing.
So then it was time to update the firmware on the DRAC5 which went nice and smooth, then figure out a way to update the firmware on the PERC6i, you guys ever came across something called Rufus? http://rufus.akeo.ie/ works like a charm to create a bootable USB stick, pop it in, boot from it, update the firmware on the perc 6i, reboot and... 2tb drives? (blink) oi vey, moral of the story don't listen to a dude at work that a perc 6i can support larger than 2tb> drives because moral of this story is, not true. Making a 8tb raid50 as we speak and initializing the drives gonna be a long night. Aside from losing 4tb worth of space, do you guys think it might be worth it to see if I can find a PERC H700 somewhere? Does anyone know if it can slot into a PE2950 GIII? I was reading someone had some success with it, but I'd hate to try to go down this road only to not have it work at all.

Anyone got a PERC H700 they'd part ways with on the cheap to experiment?

Leads me to one last question before coming to a close on this update, do you think anyone would even have an interest in 6x250gb WD RE's? Maybe some aspiring folder/boinc'er looking for drives on the cheap? Thoughts?

J

Coming up next time, pictures of that bodacious server cabinet (I know I should quit teasing you guys and give up the goods but gotta keep you coming back for more)

Must be something in the water, I'm doing a project log for a 2900 as well. I have a DRAC card that came my server I'm willing to part with. Although I don't know the model number though. PM me and we'll talk

So I got some goodies from Monoprice in over the holidays and finally took some time off to run them, I'm still needing to do six more drops but you can get the gist of it.


I've been slow in updating this log because well, honestly when I used the Perc6 which a buddy at work told me would support over 2TB drives I frankly believed him much to my disappointment when it did not at all so I've been waiting for Perc H700's to drop down to a bit more budget friendly point I finally scored one for around 200$ bought the SAS to SATA expander cables from Monoprice and found they do not indeed work as intended I was getting an error about drives not being seen. Finally I have all 18TB being seen with a total of 12TB being usable when using raid 50.


Shot of the front with some of the drive caddies.


Here's the new to me Dell Perc H700



Close up of the SAS to SATA Backplane cables I ended up going with, they are tripplites (I'll dig up the model later, got them from newegg)


And here's the latest surprise I got two WD 1TB Red (2.5") drives to run the VMWare installs so I can leave the RAID50 for storage. I used a drive chassis that uses the card slot to mount the drives in the already packed case.

So this is where the server stands to date, awaiting a molex extender cable so I can get power to the drives then I will image them and get them running and put closure to the server. I am having difficulty with the rail system I found in that it isn't long enough for the server cabinet I have but I'll leave that for the next post.

J

And now without further ado, the server cabinet!


Good old sun.


A nice shot of the front.


Started filling it up a little bit... so on to some close up shots.


Starting from the top, a shelf for my cable modem, Cisco ASA5505 and anything else I might need to slap in there, then we have a PDU (120v) a blank plate and then a Keystone type patch panel so I can color co-ordinate the ports appropriately. Below this is a 32port Digi console server that I'm going to use with all my Cisco equipment in both my lab and home network setups. It allows me to SSH to the console ports of all my devices and gives me a centralized place to manage all of it. Below this I put another blank and then my Cisco 1812 that I will be using for all my routing needs for the home. Then another blank then the patch panel that all the jacks I've been installing in the house will terminate at, then below that a Cisco 3550 12T which has 12 Gigabit ports on it and also is a Layer 3 switch.


A close up.

On to the backside...

Here we can see overall how this is all setup.


A bit wider angle, if you look at the floor of the cabinet you can see the mass of cables from the built in 220v PDU which I've been told would be more money to run it as 220 so I'm not sure what I'm going to do as I will lose the capability of having the fans that cool the cabinet automatically with it's removal...


Said fans.

Feedback? Suggestions? Drop me a line I'd love to hear what you guys think of my madness

J

I like it a lot.

That is one heck of a network backbone.

I thought I've read 220v is more efficient? (At least in the mining world)

Hummm.... looking good.. i was about to do a write up just like this.. just waiting on all the parts...

And on another note, remember I was trying to find a home for those 250gb WD RE's? All 6 of them that is... lol I found a home for 2 of them in a striped raid for my son's PC that I built for him.




The specs:

• ASRock Fatal1ty FM2A88X+ Killer
• G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000)
• AMD A10-7850K Kaveri (3.7GHz)
• Corsair Graphite 230T
• Acer H226HQLbid (21.5" IPS Display)
• Thermaltake 420W PSU

I'm amazed at the performance of the built-in graphics to be honest. Looking to maybe expand his PC with SLI using a R7 260x might be a birthday/x-mas present, we'll see.

J

TransformedBG said:

Hummm.... looking good.. i was about to do a write up just like this.. just waiting on all the parts...

Click to expand...

Please make sure to post a link when you start I'd like to see what you do with it. Thanks for the kind words and feedback thus far.

J

I like it. Subscribed

cullam3n said:

I like it. Subscribed

Click to expand...

Same. When I get my own place, I want to do something similar, just on a smaller scale. I would start now, but picking parts for a rackmount server I was looking at close to $2600, and that's before I got the actual rack Too much imaginary money, not enough real money

Honestly for me finding a server was more about honing in on a series that would do what I wanted, in this case something to host ESXi VM's without a problem. Then my search started I looked at ServerMonkey for a while but the price was too steep, I just happened across a craigslist ad around tax time that was right up my alley and so I snatched it up. I would say to keep an eye on craigslist you can find a diamond in the rough quite a bit around here. The server cabinet set me back less than a hundred bucks, you find those local also on craigs, I just happened to luck out and a guy from work had this one up for grabs.

J

Yeah you don't need to spend that much. I have my own project thread with a 13U rack that I got off craigslist. Just need to be patient and look for deals. Only paid full price for a few items, mostly because they were hard to find used. Full server racks for sale are a dime a dozen in my local craigslist. Also every couple of years the huge datacenters upgrade and unload a lot of their older servers on ebay for discounted prices.

Just a few more sneak peeks at things as a thank you for all the patience you guys have shown, don't mind my messy desk please


prolly should've cleaned up a little.


Installed the shelves a few weekends back, they are IKEA lack series and they work great. Also have a full set of 9 dioders up there for lighting Need to work on hiding the cords a bit but it's all a much better state then it was a year ago. I now have enough space for the work laptop to reside on the desk with me

J

Yeah, it wasn't serious It was more of a "what if I do this..." thing.